Contagion only or with Essence Drain?
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If I'm understanding the gems correctly, in order to be able to spread essence drain you'd have to hit enemies with both essence drain and contagion right? This will require shooting every pack twice wouldn't it? And more if you want to cast wither as well. That sounds like it might be pretty slow for mapping.
Wouldn't contagion by itself be much faster? Just boost the damage as high as possible with chaos damage, damage over time, and spell damage and just cast once and keep moving? Or possibly doing a contagion trap build, again with no essence drain. I'm not getting the point of essence drain, it just seems annoying and slow. Am I missing something? |
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Contagion can only deal so much Damage; if you want to take something down that comes with a lot of Life (Rares, Uniques, rock jerks), you stack Essence Drain on top of it so it doesn't take four times longer to kill it. It adds up quicker than stacking multiple Wither casts, plus it heals you, which is pretty relevant when you're facing a monster that stays alive.
I thought it was pretty obvious, myself. Last edited by Vipermagi#0984 on Dec 7, 2015, 8:15:23 AM
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It will all depend on Contagion damages and how the spread mechanic works (can it refresh the duration when it spreads to a target that already has the debuff?).
Also, contagion is one cast, and then things slowly die. During this time, you can run around, dodge damage, etc... Essence drains forces you to stand still while you stack it. - Last edited by Zybeline2#7822 on Dec 7, 2015, 8:52:05 AM
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If Contagion by itself can't be boosted enough on it's own by the skill tree, gear, and gem supports, than it's a total fail of a gem because we already have many skills that will clear a screen even with rares and magic monsters on a single click.
Why on earth would they introduce a new skill gem that is worse than like 10 others already in the game? If you can wreck an entire mob in a single click of Nova, or Cold Snap, or Ice storm, or poison arrow, or CoC combo, or single Cyclone pass, or single reave click, or single flicker strike click, or any number of other skills already in the game, I see no reason at all why Contagion won't be able to do the same as a stand alone skill. If it can't, it's a fail. Obviously for bosses it will need a boost or a single target killer and essence drain may in fact be a good single target killer who knows, but that's obvious for literally every skill in the game that requires help on single targets. It goes without saying, which is why I didn't say it. You apparently felt the need to though for some weird reason |
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" Then feel free to use those five skills just like last couple Leagues. Damage over Time builds are inherently slower than 100% Chance to Crit bullshit that can one-shot the screen... But half the Skills you listed don't actually clear as fast as you make them out to. All except Ice Nova have very limited AoE, you're going to be clicking multiple times, and Poison Arrow takes five seconds to deal all of its Damage (during which Ice Nova is cast ten times and Flicker builds jump fifty-odd times). Contagion might actually kill everything in one click, that depends on its AoE, but casting it multiple times does nothing for you; you have all the time in the world to double your Damage output on Rares by casting Essence Drain. Poison Arrow is the most similar in playstyle, but instead of increasing its Damage output, PA builds increase coverage by firing in different places to make up for their limited AoE. There's nothing to suggest that Contagion builds will be notably slower than Poison Arrow. They just work different, stacking Damage rather than improving coverage. " You literally said you didn't know why Essence Drain would be worth taking along. I gave a reason why you'd take Essence Drain (as a secondary Skill). If you know where Essence Drain would be good, don't say you're too dumb to realise it, maybe? That way you don't get obvious answers. |
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" Nah, the one with the chaos damage taken debuff stacks, essence drain is a projectile debuff that gets spread by contagion. Dunno how would I use it really. Maybe cast contagion and then throw a few GMP essence drains into the mix, possible with 100% pierce if it leaves debuffs on pierce (which it probably does). And maybe spam the third one on bosses to really kick these two into the gear. The good thing is they spread, so stacking duration might be a good idea. Wish the armchair developers would go back to developing armchairs.
◄[www.moddb.com/mods/balancedux]► ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/one-vision1]► |
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Wow, you missed it for the second time in a row, amazing. In my post I literally spelled it out that I was talking about mapping. IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that a single target skill will be required. Literally 99.99% of the world has enough functional grey matter to not have to say it. I found it funny that you did. Yes it was obvious, that's why it goes without saying (for almost everybody but you)
As for the other builds I mentioned not being able to one hit in mapping, every single one of them does, easily. Literally every CoC build is just a single click. One barrage or one Kinetic Blast or one Cyclone, it crits and melts the entire screen. One single ice storm kills the whole mob. One single cold snap / herald of ice blasts the screen. One single ice or shock nova kills the screen. One single leap slam or ground slam or ice crash or............. I could go on and on and on. I'm hoping contagion is a fun skill that works well as a stand alone. It'll be annoying as #$%# if we have to contagion / essence drain / wither to get enough damage. |
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Because of the way they interact, Contagion + Essence Drain is going to be strictly superior in combination and likely self-cast, IMO.
You start with throwing out a Contagion, and then hit one of the enemies in the radius with an Essence Drain. That enemy will die first, and probably rather quickly, and spread the Essence Drain to everything else affected by the Contagion, which will not only give healing but also, essentially, double the base damage of the Contagion. Since the degen is higher, it kills enemies faster, and then proliferates to targets with a longer duration remaining. |
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One more question for those that understand these mechanics because it is a little confusing.
Essence Drain: Recover .20% of Debuff Damage as life. So only 0.20% of the damage that essence drain it does itself heals you right? Not 0.20% of total dot damage on an enemy (i.e. (essence drain + contagion + wither) x 0.20% ? Last edited by Prizy#1622 on Dec 8, 2015, 4:01:25 PM
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Right, I'd say it's just essence drain.
Also, it's likely to be 0,2% of the DoT on essence drain tooltip, not what your'e doing to the enemy so wither might not increase healed amount. Wish the armchair developers would go back to developing armchairs.
◄[www.moddb.com/mods/balancedux]► ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/one-vision1]► |
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